When Miss Judy, thus urged, set the day for the tea-party, naming even the hour, she forgot for the moment that the higher court of the district convened its summer session on the day which she had appointed. And this fact made it impossible to give the party on that day. Not because she had ever had or ever expected to have anything to do with any court of law—for coming events do not always cast their shadows before—but because she expected a visit from Judge Stanley on the evening of his first day in town. For she always knew just when to look for him; during many years he had come on the same day of the month, at the same hour and almost at the same minute. And Miss Judy had through all those years been in the habit of making certain delightful preparations for his visit, which nothing but her love and anxiety for Doris ever could have caused her to forget, and which not even that could now induce her to forego.
She looked forward from one of these visits to the next as to the greatest honor, and, after her love for Doris and her tenderness for her sister, the greatest happiness of her life. She knew how great a man this quiet, gray-haired, famous jurist was to a wider world than she had ever known; and the flattery of his open and exclusive devotion filled her gentle heart with sweet and tender pride. But there was something far tenderer and sweeter than pride in the feeling with which Miss Judy awaited the coming of John Stanley; for he was always John Stanley, and never the famous judge, to her. She had loved him before he became a judge, even before he had become a man. She had learned to love him soon after his coming to Oldfield, when he was a mere lad, and her own youth was not long past. She had loved him then as a young and happy mother loves a son who is all that the happiest, proudest mother could wish—noble, gifted, handsome, spirited, fearless—loving him as such a mother loves such a son when they are young together. She loved him afterward with a still more tender love—when, in the space of a pistol shot, he had changed from a light-hearted boy into a sad, silent man—loving him then as a tender mother loves a son who has suffered and grown strong.
His blamelessness in the hideous tragedy which had darkened his life, and the nobility with which he bore himself throughout the monstrous ordeal of blood, claimed all that was strongest and finest in Miss Judy's nature, and touched her romantic imagination as all the brilliant success which came to him later never could have done. It was not for such innocent gentleness as Miss Judy's ever fully to understand the meaning of the tragedy; to comprehend how much more terrible it was than the cruelest destiny of any one man, how much farther reaching through the past and the future than the length of any one man's life. John Stanley himself understood it at the time but dimly. Only by degrees did he come to see the truth: that his forced taking of the life of a man whom he did not know, whom he never had seen or heard of, had not been simply an unavoidable necessity in self-defence, as he had tried to believe,—nor an accident, as the verdict of the law and public opinion had decreed, seeing that it was accidental only so far as his instrumentality was concerned; that he himself was not the victim of chance—but the helpless transmitter of traditional bloodshed.
It was revealed to him at the trial which acquitted him, that the man whom he thus had been compelled to kill had been driven—ay, even hounded—by public opinion into seeking the life of the man who had taunted him, and in so doing into finding his own death at the hands of a lad who had no quarrel with any one. It was then shown him that the slain and the slayer were equal sacrifices to this monstrous tradition for the shedding of blood. So that, as he began to see, and as he continually looked back upon this blighting tragedy of his boyhood, it thus became—to John Stanley, who was a thinker, and a christian, even in his youth—infinitely more terrible than any really accidental or necessary taking of another's life would have been. He saw in this monstrous deed which he had been forced to commit, the direct result of a tradition of bloody vengeance: the unmistakable outcome of generations of false thinking, of false believing, of false teaching, of false example, of false following; all the rank growth from one poisonous root, all deeply rooted in a false sense of "honor," which, planted by the Power of Evil, had grown into the very life of the people, until it now towered, a deadly upas tree, darkening and poisoning that whole sunny country, almost as darkly and killingly as its murderous kind had ever darkened and poisoned beautiful Corsica.
When that awful truth first became plain to John Stanley—plain as the handwriting on the wall—it altered not only his character, but the whole trend of his life. From the day that he had first seen it through the bloody tragedy of his youth, John Stanley had watched the growth of the poison tree with ever deepening horror. He had seen its deadly shade pass the limits of the wrong which could never be washed out by the shedding of all the blood that ever flowed in human veins; he had watched its creeping on to trivial and even fancied offences, till it touched trifling discourtesies, till it reached at last inconceivably small things—the too quick lifting of a hat to a lady, the too slow response to the bow of another man—causing trifles light as air to be measured against a human life. As John Stanley thus looked on,—horror-stricken,—at the working of this deadly poison throughout the body of the commonwealth, he came gradually to believe it to be even more deadly and more widespread than perhaps it really was. His dread and fear of any form of violence, his horror of any lightness in the holding of life, his abhorrence of bloodshed under any provocation, grew with this morbid brooding through sad and lonely years, until they imperceptibly went beyond the bounds of perfect sanity, passing into the fixed idea which much lonely thinking brings into many sad lives.
And John Stanley's life was still lonely, notwithstanding his late marriage. Miss Judy felt this to be true, although she could not have told how she knew. It always had been a source of distress to her that she could know nothing of his wife, the beautiful, brilliant woman of fashion whom he had married only a few years before. Miss Judy thought wistfully that she would know why John seemed still so sad and lonely if she could only see his wife. But the judge's fine-lady wife apparently found no inducement to come to Oldfield; so that Miss Judy was compelled to be content with asking how she was, whenever John came, and with hearing him say every time that she was well—and nothing more.
But Miss Judy was not thinking about the judge's wife on that midsummer night. It was enough for her perfect happiness merely to have him there, settled for the evening in her father's arm-chair, which was fetched out of the parlor for him and never for any one else. It was delight only to look at him, smiling at her across the passage—wherein they sat because it was cooler than the room—quite like old times. He was a very handsome, very tall man, of slender but muscular build, stooping slightly from his great height through much bending over books. His head was fine, with a noble width of brow; his thick hair, once very dark, was now silvered about the temples; but his eyes were as dark as ever, and undimmed in their clear, steady brightness. His face was sensitive in its clean-shaven delicacy, and pale with the pallor of the student. It was not so sad though on that night as usual, nor nearly so grave. He was rested and soothed and cheered—this famous man of large affairs—by listening to Miss Judy's gentle twittering, so kind, so loving. It pleased him to see the little things that she had done in preparation for his coming. He smiled at the sight of the small basket of rosy peaches daintily set about with maidenhair fern. He did not know that in order to get the fruit Miss Judy had made a hard bargain with the thrifty Mrs. Beauchamp, who had the only early peaches,—a very hard bargain whereby the little lady went without butter on her bread for a good many days. Nor did he suspect that she had climbed to the top of the steepest hillside trying to reach the woods, regardless of the fluttering of her heart; or that she had ventured bravely even into the shadiest dell, heedless of her fear of snakes, in order to get his favorite fern to wreathe his favorite fruit. Perhaps no man ever knows what the pleasing of him costs a loving woman; certainly no loving woman ever takes the cost into account.
But then, on the other hand, perhaps no woman, however loving, ever can fully realize how much unstinted tenderness may mean to the greatest, the gravest, the most reserved of men, when he has never found it in his own home or anywhere else in all the cold world, which he has conquered by giving up the warmth and sweetness of life—as they must be given up by every conqueror of the region of perpetual ice. Miss Judy's gentle love now enfolded him like a soft, warm mantle, so that the chill at his heart melted away. It was then very sweet on that fragrant midsummer night, to this sad and weary man, to hear Miss Judy babbling gently on. He did not always listen to what she said; but the sound of her soft voice seemed for the moment to take away all weariness and pain, as she talked to him of the people and the things that he had known in his youth. She said about the same over and over, to be sure, almost every time he came, but that made no difference whatever; it was the sweetness of her spirit, the peace of her presence, that the great judge craved and loved and rested upon.
"And now, John, here are a few peaches—just the kind you like," Miss Judy said, in her artlessly artful little way, as if the pretty basket had only that moment fallen from the clouds—as she always said when he had sat a certain length of time in her father's chair in the coolest corner of the passage.
"Why,—so they are!" exclaimed the judge, in delighted surprise, as he always exclaimed when the peaches were offered precisely at the time when he expected them to be. "How in the world do you always remember—never once forgetting—from year to year? And these are the prettiest of all. See the rose velvet of that peach's bloom."
And then Miss Judy, delighted, and beaming, bustled about, spreading her mother's best napkin over the judge's knees and under the plate (the prettiest one with the wreath of forget-me-nots), wishing with all her loving heart that she might find a pretext for tying something around his dear neck. When she had put an old silver knife in his hand,—after being as long about it as she could be—conscientiously,—she gave Miss Sophia also a share of the rosy feast, and then sat down with a sigh of complete content, and looked at them positively radiating happiness; the happiness which only such a woman can feel in seeing those whom she loves enjoying pleasures and privileges which she never claims nor even thinks of, for herself.
And thus passed the first two hours of the three hours that the judge always spent with Miss Judy on the first evening of his coming to Oldfield. There was something which he felt that he must say before he went away, but he shrunk from saying it, fearing to disturb Miss Judy; and so put it off as long as he could, waiting indeed till the last. He was not sure that it was a matter of real importance; he was rather of the opinion that it was not of any actual consequence, and yet he could not help mentioning it in justice to Miss Judy. In glancing over the docket for the term, as he usually glanced immediately upon reaching the village, he was surprised to find that a suit had been brought against the estate of Major Bramwell for the payment of a note given by him to Colonel Fielding. Looking farther, he saw that the note had been transferred to Alvarado years before, and that the suit was brought in the Spaniard's name. This was the shadow now coming over the judge's visit to Miss Judy—this, and the blacker shadow cast by the past whenever John Stanley was compelled to remember the existence of the Spaniard, and the passion, cruelty, and deceit which had so ruthlessly shut the light out of three hapless lives. He never thought of him if he could help it; he never had been known to speak of him nor heard to call his name. When Alvarado—mad with hate and jealousy that death itself had not been able to soften or to cool—had continued to thrust himself into the court upon first one wild pretext and then another wilder pretext, during term after term, the judge had steadily looked away, had steadily held himself from all anger as well as all violence, avoiding the clash which the madman sought. The coolness and skill of the jurist had enabled him to do this without great difficulty up to the present time, and he had no fear of not being able to do the same in the present case. He was not even any longer afraid of himself. Still, it was necessary that he should explain the matter to Miss Judy, since she must almost certainly hear of it and might naturally be hurt at his silence. His first impulse had been to send the amount of the note with interest to the holder of it by some third person, and so to dispose of the suit without Miss Judy's knowledge. But a second thought made plain to him that the money was not what the Spaniard wanted, and that such a step, even if possible, would be utterly useless. It would also be worse than useless to appeal to Colonel Fielding or to try to learn how and when the note had come into Alvarado's possession. The old man had always been a child in heart; he was now a child in mind. And then—the unhappiness of John Stanley's youth had so warped his maturer judgment of the causes of his misery—he had never been able to hold Alice Fielding's father quite without blame for her sacrifice. No, he could not go to Colonel Fielding, not even now, in his age and feebleness, not even for Miss Judy's sake.
The strong often find it hard to understand how blamelessly the weak may yield to violence. The wise, for all their wisdom, hardly ever can see how innocence itself may lead the unwise into the pit digged by the wicked. No, John Stanley could not go to Colonel Fielding, who, although but as an innocent, helpless child himself now, alas! had been the father of the girl whom he had loved, and who had been given to a bloodthirsty beast in human form. No, he could not do that, even for Miss Judy's sweet sake. So John Stanley thought, under a sudden great wave of the old bitterness, with the pain of memory rushing back as if the flood of wretchedness had engulfed him but yesterday. He could do nothing else than tell Miss Judy, and he must tell her at once—lest she hear it from some other source—and so gently that she could not be frightened, timid as she was. There need be no trouble about the mere money; he did not consider that at all; unknown to Miss Judy, he could shield her from that. Nor was there any danger of so much as a collision of words with the Spaniard, now or at any time. Nothing that could ever come to pass—nothing in the vast power of evil—could make him, whose hands had once been innocently dyed in a fellow-creature's blood, lift his hand against another man, or force him to utter one word to tempt another to raise a hand against himself.
Little by little the shadow had deepened, till Miss Judy saw it in his sensitive face, and had begun to grow uneasy before he spoke.
"Do you know, or, rather, did you ever know, anything about your father's having given his note to Colonel Fielding," he said, finally, when he could wait no longer. "A note of hand, and without security, I believe."
Miss Judy's blue eyes opened wide in startled surprise. Then she blushed vividly; even by the poor light of the one flickering candle the judge could see the rose color flush her fair face, which had been so pale of late. Her father's debts had ever been a sore subject, and, although it was now many years since they had been recalled to her memory by mention, her sensitiveness had not lessened in the least.
"No, I do not," she said, with a touch of stiffness. "Our father was not in the habit of speaking to us of business. He thought that gentlewomen should be shielded from all sordid matters," she added, her gentle tone marking a wider distance than had ever before existed between John Stanley and herself.
The judge felt it, and realized instantly that he had made a bad beginning, one very far indeed from his intention.
"But why do you ask?" inquired Miss Judy, while he hesitated.
"My dear Miss Judy, nothing was further from my thoughts than to startle or offend you; but you know that—I only meant to tell you that—that a small matter has arisen which—that an unimportant suit has been filed—"
Miss Judy arose suddenly, and stood before him like a sentinel guarding a post. "Am I to understand, John, that some one is suing my father for debt," she said stiffly, and almost coldly; but the stiffness and coldness now were not for him. "Tell me all about it at once, please."
"It is nothing to trouble you. If such a note be in existence, it must have been barred by the statute of limitation long ago. How long has it been since your father died?" asked the judge.
"Over twenty-five years,—twenty-six years this coming October." And as Miss Judy spoke she turned, with a soft sigh, and looked tenderly at Miss Sophia, and was glad to see that she was fast asleep, sitting straight up in her chair.
"And this note, if given at all, must, of course, have been drawn before that date. Your father was in Virginia a long time."
"Yes," sighed Miss Judy, glancing again lovingly and protectingly at Miss Sophia. "It is very painful to sister Sophia and myself to remember how long."
"Don't think any more about it," said the judge. "There can be no necessity for your giving it another thought. The length of time, the statute of limitation, protects you. The note cannot possibly be of any value."
Miss Judy stood still for a moment in perplexed thought, with her little hands very tightly clasped before her.
"But if my father gave the note,—if he ever owed Colonel Fielding the money, and it never has been paid, I don't see that time can make any difference," she said at last, a little absently and a little uncertainly, as if she did not yet quite understand, but was, nevertheless, firmly feeling her way to the light.
"Well, most people would think it made a difference," the judge responded, smiling in spite of his sympathy with her troubled perplexity.
"I can't believe that Colonel Fielding can have meant to bring such a suit. He loved my father and honored him above all other men. I cannot believe that he would knowingly smirch the memory of his best friend; unless, poor old man, his mind is entirely gone. And why has the note not been known about before? Why have I never been told—all these years? Are you sure, John, that there is no mistake? Are you sure that the colonel has actually brought the suit?" asked Miss Judy, piteously, with her blue eyes—clouded and filling with tears—fixed on the judge's face.
"It is not the colonel," murmured the judge.
"Then who is it?" persisted Miss Judy, with growing bewilderment and distress. "Who comes at this late day claiming that my father did not pay what he owed,—when he could have paid?"
"Alvarado," John Stanley said, in so low a tone that she barely heard, thus forced himself to utter the name of the Spaniard for the first time since it had become to him an unspeakable thing.
"John—John, I humbly beg your pardon. I didn't dream—oh, my son," Miss Judy cried, forgetting her own trouble.
She ran to him and laid her tender little hands on his broad shoulders, and gazed into his pale, calm face, all unconscious that her own was quivering and wet with tears—tears for the pain which she saw in his set face, for his sacrificed youth, for his lost happiness—tears most of all for gentle Alice Fielding, the girl whom he still loved, although she had rested so long in the grave of the broken-hearted.
Misfortune never comes singly to a community any more than to an individual. No life anywhere may ever stand or fall quite alone, so are the living all bound together. In a village where every door stands wide and all lives are in the open, and where no high, hard walls rise between the people,—as they do in a city,—the bond is closer than it can be elsewhere. So that the uneasiness which the judge communicated so unwillingly to Miss Judy on that quiet midsummer night was the beginning of the end of the peace of many of the good people of Oldfield, for a long time afterward.
Sorely troubled, Miss Judy had lain awake hour after hour looking into the darkness, and trying to see the way to do that which she knew was right. She had seen her duty distinctly enough as soon as the judge's meaning was clear; the only uncertainty was as to the means of doing it. The money must be paid, the length of time during which it had been owing only making the payment more urgent. No loophole of the law could afford any means of escape to a sense of honor as fine and true as hers. Such a possibility did not cross her mind as she lay thinking in the silence of the night, which was broken only by the peaceful little puffing sound that came tranquilly from Miss Sophia's side of the big, high bed. Miss Judy again softly put out her thin little hand in the dark, and softly patted her sister's round, plump shoulder with protecting tenderness, as she always instinctively caressed her when trouble drew near. Come what would, this sister, so tenderly loved, should not know or suffer any privation that could be prevented. It would be hard to keep her from knowing if the payment of the note should require the entire amount of the next pension money, which was every cent they would have for months. Still, Miss Judy remembered how she had managed, several times ere this, in keeping other unpleasant things from her sister's knowledge, and she now lay revolving transparent schemes and innocent fictions, alternately smiling and sighing, half proud and half ashamed of her own deep duplicity.
The result of the night's reflection was that she went early on the next morning to the tavern to see Judge Stanley, hoping to be able to speak to him before he left his room for the court-house. But some little delay had been required—so at least Miss Judy imagined—in order to allay Miss Sophia's suspicions, and the judge was already gone when Miss Judy reached the tavern. She hesitated for a few moments, blushing, embarrassed, confused, and utterly thrown out of her plans. She had never entered the court-house; she had never heard of a gentlewoman's doing such a thing. The very thought of approaching the door of it shocked her as something improper and almost immodest. And yet it was absolutely necessary for her to see the judge immediately, so that she might tell him of her decision before the case could be called. She would do almost anything rather than allow her father's honored name to be dishonorably mentioned in the hearing of the people of Oldfield, who had revered him all their lives, and looked up to him as the finest of gentlemen, the most valiant of soldiers. Without giving herself time to shrink or to flinch, she turned desperately and hurried toward the court-house, as she would have marched to the cannon's mouth.
The court was barely opened, the judge was just taking his seat on the bench, when the sheriff came and told him that Miss Judy was at the door and would like to see his Honor if he "would kindly step outside." The sheriff smiled in bringing him the message, his broad, kind face broadening and growing kinder with the affectionate indulgence which everybody always felt for Miss Judy's harmless peculiarities. Even the judge's grave face relaxed somewhat, lighting and softening, as he promptly arose from the bench and went to do the little lady's bidding. He found her on the other side of the big road, and not at the door of the court-house, where he had expected to find her. She had, indeed, hastily retreated as far as she dared, after sending for him, and now stood awaiting him, terrified and trembling, at being even as near the door as she was—hovering like a bird just alighted but ready to take flight. In her agitation she held the front breadth of her best bombazine very, very high indeed, so that her neat little prunella gaiters were plainly visible, and even her trim ankles were quite distinctly in sight; and there were also unmistakable glimpses of snow-white ruffles of an antiquated fashion, like the delicate feathers about the feet of a white bantam.
"I wanted to see you, John, before the suit could come up," she began pantingly at once. "I thought it all over last night,—after you were gone."
"Everything is right, Miss Judy. I considered the matter again when I went back to the tavern. Don't give it another thought. The suit is barred by limitation long ago," the judge said gently, as if soothing a frightened child.
"But is it really a note of my father's? Did he ever owe the money? And is it true that the debt never has been paid? That is what I wish to know," persisted Miss Judy, with all the earnestness of a woman who knows well the meaning of her words.
Her blue eyes were uplifted to his face, and she read in it the answer which he would have been glad to withhold.
"Then it must be paid," she said firmly, promptly, conclusively. She had been drifting out of her depth ever since the stunned plunge of the first shock; but she now felt solid ground once more under her feet. "There is my dear and honored father's pension for his services in the War for Independence. A portion of that could scarcely be better used than in discharging any pecuniary obligation of his, which he may naturally have forgotten, or chanced to overlook."
This was said loftily, almost carelessly, as though the large size of the pension made any unexpected demand upon it a mere trifle, and with a gentle, sweet look of pride. The judge could not help smiling, notwithstanding that he was touched and even troubled, knowing how grave a matter any call for money must be to Miss Judy. Looking down upon her from his great height, he thought he never before had known what a frail pretty little creature she was, nor how deeply, purely blue her eyes were, with the blue of fresh-blown flax-flowers, nor how like silver floss her hair was, till he now saw it new burnished by the sunlight. But he stood in silence, uncertain what to say, fearing to wound her.
"And the amount of the note? How much is it?" Miss Judy asked suddenly, after the momentary silence.
Nothing could have been more like her, more entirely characteristic of her whole life, than that this question, which would have been the first with many, should have been the last with her. Yet now that it had occurred to her, she held her breath with fear. If it should be more than the amount of the whole pension,—more than she had or ever hoped to have in the wide world,—what should she do then?
"It was drawn for a hundred dollars. I have not yet calculated the interest," the judge answered reluctantly.
Miss Judy gasped and turned white; the earth seemed suddenly sliding beneath her feet. Then in another instant a scarlet tide swept the paleness from her alarmed face. The blood in her gentle veins was, after all, the blood of a soldier, and she fought on to the last trench.
"It must be paid, as soon as possible," she said formally, as if speaking to a stranger; but she laid her trembling little hand in John Stanley's warm, firm clasp with a look of perfect love and trust before she turned from him and went on her troubled way homeward.
He stood still for a moment when she had left him, gazing after the little figure in black fluttering against the warm wind. Then he turned slowly and went back to his seat on the bench, and the routine of the court forthwith began to drone throughout the long, hot day. A feeling of foreboding, a vague dread of some unknown calamity, had hung over him when he had first awakened on that morning; as though a formless warning had come through the mists of unremembered dreams. He was not able to cast off the depression which it caused, and the feeling deepened with the dragging of the heavy hours. But it wavered still without distinct form. It had nothing to do with his hourly, momentary expectation of seeing the Spaniard's threatening face and wild eyes confronting him through the gloom of the low-ceiled court-room. He was used to the sight and he never had feared it, save as he always feared himself and the enforced shedding of blood. The only unusual thing was that Alvarado should not be in his accustomed place that day, as he invariably had been heretofore, whenever the judge had been on the bench; but this fact gave the judge no uneasiness, he hardly thought of it at all, for his mind was filled with other things. He leaned his aching head on his hand as the business of the court droned dully along and the heat grew steadily greater. He thought, vaguely, that it must be the heat and the scent of the catalpa flowers which weighed so heavily upon him. For a few large, white bells swung uncommonly late amongst the heavy, dusty foliage of the catalpa trees, crowding close to the deep windows, darkening the court-room and shutting out every breath of the fitful, sultry breeze.
He left the court-house as soon as he could get away, and strolled slowly toward the farthest, highest hillside, whither he often went at the close of a tiring day. The warm wind had died out of the valley, but the air would, so he thought, be cooler on the hilltop; a cool breeze nearly always stirred the tall cedars of the graveyard, as if with the chill air of the tomb. He found the gate open, as it always was. There was never any need for closing it. Within were no gilded bones to be stolen: without were no inhuman robbers of graves. So that here those who rested within had nothing more to fear; and those who strove without could not be barred when they also came to stay.
Leaning on the fence, he turned and looked down upon the drowsing village; at the men, white and black, who were going homeward with the unhasting pace of the country; at the black women with milk-pails, crossing the back lots whence the cows were calling; at the farmers, already far in the distance, riding away from court; at the great road wagons, with their mighty teams of four and six horses. These great wagons were the huge ships of this vast inland sea of wheat and corn and tobacco, and now but lately launched, heavy-laden, with the newly garnered grain.
And then, as his wandering, absent gaze fell near by, upon the path from the village leading up the hillside, he saw that Lynn and Doris were slowly climbing it after him toward the graveyard. He had met the young man at the tavern on the previous day, and he had known his father. He had always known Doris in the distant way in which he knew all the people of Oldfield, with the sole exception of Miss Judy. He therefore greeted them with the formal courtesy that he gave to every one; and he talked with them for a few moments, in his grave, impersonal way, but he was disappointed in his wish for solitude, and he lingered no longer than good breeding required. He did not stay to go over to an isolated corner of the graveyard as he had intended, to see if the tangle of weeds and briers, which makes the desolation of neglected burial-grounds, had been taken away from one solitary grave, as it always was when he came and never at any other time. He could not do this in the presence of any one, so that, lifting his hat with a faint smile, he now turned his face toward the village and the tavern.
At the foot of the hill he happened upon the little Frenchman, who sat groaning by the roadside, unable to walk because he had wrenched his ankle, spraining it very badly, in getting over the fence.
"But it is not that I do care for the pain. Bah!" cried monsieur, with a Gallic gesture and an inflection that belonged to no nation and was wholly his own. "It is—hélas!—the ploughing for the spring wheat. A man may not hobble after the plough, neither may he follow with crutches."
"Oh, you needn't trouble about that. There's plenty of time, and you can't plough, anyway, until a rainfall has softened the ground," said the judge, kindly.
"The black man, devoid of intelligence, who tills the fields of monsieur the doctor, ploughs to-day in the dust. Should the grain of the fields of monsieur the doctor grow quicker and thrive better than the grain of the fields of madame the mistress, whose fields I myself do till, then I shall surely mortify."
"There's nothing to be done in the fields now," the judge said, trying not to smile. "Let me help you," bending over and offering his strong arm and broad shoulder. "You'll be all right again in good time for the spring wheat. A sprained ankle is no Waterloo!"
The Frenchman shrunk, dropping away from the outstretched arm as though it had struck him down. His face, open and transparent as a child's, had been confidingly upturned; now it fell, reddened and clouded with anger, indignation, and shame. Falling back, he tried at once to rise again, only to sink—groaning and helpless—more prone than before, while hissing through his clenched teeth something aboutle sentiment du fer.
"It is the fatal misfortune of my father that you do insult!" he said fiercely, in English, striving vainly to maintain an icy civility. "When it is that I may again stand on my feet, your Highness will perhaps—"
"Come, come, Beauchamp. You are suffering. Here, let me help you."
"Jamais! Jamais!—not to ze death!" cried monsieur, shrieking with mingled rage and pain.
The judge, from his calm height, looked silently down on the pathetic little form stretched at his feet, at the gray head resting now on the hard earth, and, seeing the dignity, the tragedy, which strangely invested it, a great surge uplifted the deep pity for the mystery and the sorrow of living which always filled his sad heart.
"As you please about that, Mr. Beauchamp. But you must allow me to pull off your boot before your leg becomes worse swollen. You are risking permanent injury by keeping it on; the hurt seems more serious than any mere sprain," he said, with the gentle patience that great strength always has for real weakness.
And then this stately gentleman, this famous judge, knelt down in the dust of the common highway, beside this poor distraught, angry, resisting, atom of humanity, and tenderly released the injured ankle from the pressure that was torturing it.
"Now, that's better," he said, rising, and looking round in some perplexity. "Ah, yonder is a cart coming up the big road. I can get the driver of it to take you home."
He spoke to the negro who was driving the swaying oxen, and gave him some money, and stood waiting until he saw the Frenchman lifted carefully and safely into the cart, and well started on the way toward his home. Then the judge went on his own lonely, homeless road to the tavern. The lengthening shadows of the hills were already darkening the valley, although a wonderful golden light still lingered above the summits, making the new moon look wan. There was only daylight enough for the judge to see old lady Gordon sitting alone at her window, and seeing her, he was reminded that it was his duty to tell her of the accident which had befallen the manager of her farm.
She looked up suddenly, almost eagerly, at the sound of his approach, and peered into the gloaming with the sad intentness of weary eyes which are no longer sure of what they see. When she recognized the judge, she suddenly settled heavily back in her chair with an abrupt movement of angry disappointment. She did not thank him for coming to tell her, and she did not ask him to come in. She merely nodded with the rude taciturnity which, with her, always marked some disturbance of mind.
For this breaker from a sea of troubles, gradually overspreading all Oldfield, had now gone so far that it had stirred, at last, even the long unstirred level of old lady Gordon's vast indifference.
It had been many a long year since she had been moved to such anger as she was feeling on that day; few things seemed to her worth real anger; she accepted almost everything with careless, almost amiable, tolerance. Selfishness as absolute as hers often wears a manner very like good nature, because it is far too great to be moved by trifles.
Poor old lady Gordon! She had managed to sink her disappointment in self-indulgence, as wretchedness too often sinks itself in opium. She had eaten rich food because the eating of it helped to pass the dull days of her distasteful life; she had read all the novels within her reach—good, bad, and indifferent—because reading was not so tiresome as thinking, when there was nothing pleasant to think about; she had laughed at many follies and mistakes which she saw clearly enough, because it seemed to her useless to try to prevent folly or the making of mistakes.
And yet none knew the true from the false better than this honest, scornful old pagan, who had buried more than one talent, more than ordinary intelligence, under habitual sloth of mind and body; and none had a more genuine respect for all that was finest and highest. But her own early striving toward it had met too complete a defeat for her—being what she was—to go on striving or to think it worth while for others to strive. A nature like hers can never submit, unembittered and unhardened, to wrong and unhappiness; nor is it ever winged by the spiritual so that it may rise above its false place in the world. It can only beat itself against the stone wall of environment, or recoil in fatalistic indifference. And in this last poor old lady Gordon had found refuge so long ago that she had quite forgotten the pain—and the pleasure—which comes with suffering through loving.
And then, after she had thus lived through many wasted days, and many empty nights, it seemed as if this grandson had come at the eleventh hour to open the door of her prison-house. She had not believed it at first; more than a half-century is so long to wait for everything which the heart most craves, that it cannot believe at once when its supreme desire seems about to be granted at last. But, nevertheless, old lady Gordon's pleasure and pride in her grandson had grown fast and steadily through those perfect days and weeks of summer. It had pleased her more and more to hear his strong, gay young voice ringing through the silence of the dull old house. It had pleased her more and more to look at his bright, handsome young face across the table, which had been lonely so long. It had pleased her most of all to have his cheering young presence—so over-flowing with hope and spirits—at her side, through the dreary hours of the lingering twilight, when she had been forced, in the solitude of the old time, to face alone the dreaded muster of disappointment's mocking spectres.
Thus had old lady Gordon regarded her grandson in the beginning of her acquaintance with him. But she gradually began to know him, to see him as he really was, to think that he might be what he meant to be. And so, little by little, this hard, embittered, lonely old soul came finally to believe that a grudging fate was, after all, about to grant to her age the true son of her own heart, of her great pride, of her unbounded ambition—the son whom it had so cruelly denied to her youth and maturity. Then there came a strange and piteous stirring of all her long-numbed sensibilities; a powerful, and even terrible, uprising of all her intensest feelings. It was as if a mighty old grapevine, long stripped of fruit and foliage, long fallen away from every living thing, long trailing along the earth—deeply covered with mould and weeds—as if such a mighty, twisted, hard old grapevine were suddenly to put forth strong new tendrils, and, entwining them around a young tree, should thus begin to rise again toward the last light of life's sunset.
And now, just as this late warmth was sending its rays through the chill veins of unloved and unloving old age,—the coldest and the saddest thing in the whole world,—old lady Gordon once more found herself facing the same danger which had wrecked all her earlier hopes. She had shut her keen old eyes to it at first, and had merely smiled, although she had seen her grandson's interest in Doris quite clearly ever since its commencement. The girl seemed to her so far beneath her grandson in station as to be safely outside any serious consideration. For no Brahmin was ever more deeply imbued with the prejudice of caste than this slothful old lady Gordon; and no consideration other than a serious one could disturb her in the least. Moreover, she rested for a while upon her confidence in Lynn's singleness of purpose, believing in his determination to allow nothing to turn him from the pursuit of his ambition. But later, as the summer days went by and she saw him giving more and more of his time to this yellow-haired, brown-eyed, sweet-spoken, soft-mannered daughter of the village news-monger, and less and less to the thought and study of his chosen profession, a doubt entered her mind, and began to rankle like a thorn in the flesh. As she was left more and more alone, till she had scarcely any of her grandson's society, which was now become so sweet, she had time to remember the folly and weakness of his father, and the folly and wickedness of his grandfather. These dark memories, surging back, as she brooded in solitude, brought old bitterness to her new uneasiness; and yet, recalling many mistakes which she had made in the old time through the rashness of inexperience, she still kept silence, resolving not to fall into such errors again. She did not speak slightingly of the girl, recalling that as one of her most fatal errors; and she was also withheld by a grim sense of justice which was always lurking, half-forgotten, within her hard old breast. She accordingly wisely confined herself to passing comments upon Sidney, and to occasional references to Uncle Watty, directing most of her witty, satirical talk toward love and marriage in the abstract. One day she read Lynn a couple of lines from an old novel which said that:—
"Falling in love is like falling downstairs; it is always an accident, and nearly always a misfortune."
She had many such dry and stinging epigrams at her sharp tongue's end in those days, when she was using wit, satire, irony, and ridicule as weapons to defend her late-coming happiness. Poor old lady Gordon! it was very hard. Selfishness always makes opposition bitterly hard, and it is hard indeed to have been compelled to wait through the space of a generation for the supreme desire of the heart. It was harder than a nature so imperious as hers could endure, to meet such ignoble interference at this eleventh hour, now that its late fulfilment seemed so near, now that she herself had so little time for longer waiting.
So thus it was that scornful impatience gradually gave way to bitter anger, to the fierce, compelling anger of the autocrat long unused to having her will crossed, much less lightly set aside, and, least of all, to having it totally disregarded. It was lightly and even gayly that Lynn had gone his own way in opposition to hers; but when their wills had clashed slightly once or twice, old lady Gordon had seen that they were made of the same piece of cold steel. She had recognized the fact with a queer mixture of pride and displeasure, but the recognition had turned her away from all thought of force, and she had henceforth resorted to subtler measures. She had tried—with a gentleness so foreign to her nature that it was pathetic—to keep him at her side, as a tigress might softly stretch out a paw—every cruel claw sheathed in velvet—to draw a cub away from danger. But this too failed, as the efforts of the old to hold the young always must fail when nature calls. And thus it was that the lingering twilights of those last summer days found old lady Gordon again alone, as the judge had found her; again solitary at lonely nightfall; again—with the long night so near—gazing into the gathering darkness at the ghostly assemblage of all her dead hopes.
Lynn did not come that night until she had turned and tossed through more than one sleepless hour. At breakfast the next morning they had little to say to one another. It was nearly always so now, although Lynn had scarcely noted the fact that all ease and confidence had gone out of their companionship. He was always in haste of late to get away; every morning he went earlier to join Doris, forgetting all about the law books which lay on the table in his room, and which his grandmother used to go and look at and turn over—most piteously. She now used rarely to stir from her chair except to do this. Every evening he was later in leaving Doris, and slower in coming home; and he never lingered now on the dark porch to think over his plans. And day by day old lady Gordon's secret wrath burned more fiercely, although she still kept it carefully covered with the ashes of assumed indifference. But on the evening of the judge's visit her long-smouldering anger had, for the first time, burst into flame beyond her control. She had seen Lynn and Doris passing on their way to the graveyard; she had watched the flutter of the girl's white skirt at her grandson's side all along the slow, winding way up to the high hilltop. The sight had been as wind and fuel to raging fire. It was well for the judge that he had not lingered while the flames thus raged; it was well for Lynn that he had been for the moment beyond the reach of his grandmother's burning contempt; it was well for Doris—though as innocent of all offence as one of the white lambs feeding on the hillside—well that her return was unseen in the gloaming; it had been well—most of all—for this fierce old spirit itself that certain strong, dark drops, from the bag hanging at the head of her bed, could lay for a few hours the mocking ghosts of dead hopes, all slain by folly and weakness, even as this last one seemed now being put to death before her very eyes.
The morning found her spent in strength; and the fire of her anger, although uncooled, was again covered by the silence of exhaustion. Moods of silence were, however, not unusual with her, and Lynn was too deeply absorbed in his own pleasant thoughts to observe his grandmother's ominous brooding. When the meal was over, with the exchange of hardly a dozen thoughtless words upon his part, and of taciturn responses upon her side, Lynn took up his hat and went out of the house and toward the gate. Pausing under the cypress tree, he looked back and smiled and waved his hand; and then he went swiftly along the big road toward the silver poplars.
Old lady Gordon sat quite still in her chair, gazing after him with darkly drawn brows, with her turkey-wing fan lying forgotten on her lap, and her novel cast, neglected, on a chair by her side. She had not told Lynn of the accident to the manager of the farm; she had not spoken of her intended visit to the Frenchman on that morning; she had not asked her grandson to go with her, although she walked with difficulty and even with pain, and longed with age's helplessness to have him near by to lean upon. When Lynn was quite out of sight she arose—a fine, majestic old figure in her loose white drapery—and started across the fields, making her slow, painful way to the Beauchamp cottage. She found the Frenchman in bed, and, seeing how seriously he was hurt, and remembering the farm work which must go undirected, she was not in a better humor when she turned her face homeward. Still she held her wrath with an iron hand, exercising perhaps the greatest self-control that she had ever brought to bear upon anything during her whole life. She even forced herself to make some gruffly civil response when Lynn came back to dinner at noon, and hastened away again as soon as he could, with a few hurried, happy words and another gay smile and careless wave of his hand. But all through the afternoon hours of that long, dull, solitary day old lady Gordon's anger grew as thunder clouds gather, and when, after supper, Lynn again took up his hat and turned, intending again to leave her, the brewing tempest suddenly burst upon him.
"Have you ever stopped to think where all this philandering must lead? It's high time," she broke out, hoarse with passionate rage.
The young man, holding his hat in his hand, wheeled and looked at his grandmother in utter amazement, startled, almost alarmed, by the violence of her tone and by the suddenness of the attack.
"I don't understand. I don't know in the least what you mean," he said honestly enough, and yet, even as he spoke, a glimmering consciousness came into his open face.
"Oh, yes, you do. You know perfectly well, but I'll put it plainer if you want me to," she went on, roughly, sneeringly.
Lynn reddened, putting up his hand with a gesture imposing silence. "Perhaps I do understand something of what you mean," he said hesitatingly, with the hesitation which every right-minded man feels at referring—however distantly—in any such connection to a girl whom he reveres. "And if I do understand anything of what you mean, you must allow me to tell you that there has been no philandering, nor any semblance of it."
"Then what do you call it?" she demanded, with even greater violence and roughness than before. "May I ask how you characterize this perpetual dawdling, all day and nearly all night, at the heels of a girl whose rank is hardly above that of a servant—a girl whom even the son of your father, or the grandson of your grandfather, could scarcely be fool or rake enough to think of—except as something to philander after."
She hurled the brutal words at him as she would have thrown stones in his face, far too furious to think or to care how they might hurt.
He recoiled, shocked, revolted, by the sight of such unrestrained anger in age. It seemed an incredibly monstrous thing. Then he stood still, looking at her with a cool courage which matched her flaming rage. He now moved farther away, but it was solely because he felt a sudden extreme repulsion.
"Pardon me," he said icily, moving still farther, still nearer the open door. "It is you who do not understand. There certainly is nothing that any one else can possibly have misunderstood. I have been scrupulously careful all along that there should not be. I have guarded every act, every word, every look—"
Old lady Gordon burst out laughing like a coarse old man deep in his cups.
"Oh ho!" she scoffed. "So that's how the matter stands, is it? How high-minded! How prudently virtuous! How perfectly Sidney's daughter must understand. How highly the girl must appreciate it. Of course she does understand and appreciate your prudence, your thought—of yourself. What woman wouldn't? Even a simpleton of a country girl must have been overcome by it. She can't help forgiving you for trying your best to make her fall in love with you, if you have been as steadfast—as you say you have—in warning her that you didn't mean to fall in love with her. How she must honor and admire you!" she taunted, with something masculine in her voice, and laughing again like a coarse old man.
The shafts of her merciless scorn pierced the armor of the young man's cool calmness like arrows barbed with fire. It seemed to him for an instant as though flame suddenly wrapped him from head to foot. He felt literally scorched by a burning sense of shame, although, dazed and bewildered, he could not yet see whence it came. The blood rushed into his face, into his head; his eyes fell; he could not keep them on his grandmother's mocking, scornful face.
Old lady Gordon's fiery gaze did not fall, but it softened. A strange look, one which was hard to read, came to replace the expression of contemptuous anger. There was still some scorn in it, yet the scorn was curiously mingled with vanity.
"Well, after all, you are more like me than you're like the men of the family," she said abruptly, with a sudden return to her usual manner.
Lynn could not speak; he could not look at her. He silently bent down and took up his hat, which had dropped from his nerveless grasp, and with bowed head he went silently out into the shielding dusk.
The first wound received by true self-respect is always a terrible thing. And the truer the self-esteem and the better founded, the more the slightest blow must bruise it. The deepest stabbing of the derelict can never hurt so much or be so hard to heal. It may indeed be doubted whether a touch on the real quick of a fine sense of honor ever entirely heals.
A man coarser and duller than Lynn Gordon was, less high-minded, less essentially honorable, could not have suffered as he was suffering when he went out that night into the dusky peace of the drowsing village. Yet he could hardly tell at first whence came the blow which had wounded him so deeply. The suddenness of the arraignment had dazed him; the violence of the attack had stunned him; so that he was conscious mainly of a strange bewilderment of pain and humiliation, as though he had been struck down in the dark.
He went through the gate as if walking in a distressful dream, and turned toward the silver poplars, as he had turned at that time of the evening for many weeks, but turning through sheer force of habit, scarcely knowing whither he went. It was not yet quite nightfall; the starlight was just beginning to meet the twilight, only commencing to arch vast violet spaces high above the dim trees on the far-folded hills. The silvery mists, ever lurking among the fringing willows of the stream murmuring through the meadows, were already rising to cloud the lowlands with fleecy whiteness, radiantly starred with fireflies. The few languid sounds of living heard in the day, now had all passed away before the coming of night. Only the plaintive song of the white cricket came from the misty distance; only the lonely chime of the brown cricket rang from the near-by grass; only the chilling prophecy of the katydid's cry shrilled through the peaceful silence of the warm, fragrant gloaming.
But the softest dusk of heaven, the completest peace of earth, is powerless to calm the storm which beats upon the spirit. Lynn Gordon strode on as though to confront the full glare of life's fiercest turmoil. He was driven by such stinging humiliation as he had never expected to know; he was goaded by such pain of mind as made his very body ache. So that he thus went forward, swiftly, fiercely, for a score of paces, and then he stopped and stood still, arrested by a sudden thought which was as blasting as a flash of lightning. For an instant his hot and heavy-beating heart seemed to cease its rapid throbbing and to grow suddenly cold with sickening fear. Another moment and he felt as if a living flame wrapped him again from head to foot, so intolerable was the burning shame that flashed over him. Had Doris seen him—as his grandmother had seen him? Had Doris recognized in his guarded attitude toward her an intended warning to guard her own heart—as his grandmother had said? Had Doris felt—as his grandmother had charged—that he had thus offered her the most unpardonable indignity that an honorable man can offer a modest woman?
Under the shock of the thought he recoiled from it as too monstrous to be true. That exquisite, spotless child! That sacred embodiment of peerless beauty! He could have groaned aloud as the unbearable thought clung like a flaming garment. Yet he could not cast it from him; and out of the smoke of memory there now came swirling many little half-forgotten incidents. Small things, which had then seemed at the time to be trifles light as air, now came back, seeming confirmations strong as proof of holy writ. Under the light of this fiery revelation one recollection stood out more distinctly than any other. He remembered giving Doris some simple little gift. He saw again in this dim, unpeopled dusk, even more clearly than he had seen it then, the bewitching brightness of her beautiful face, the soft radiance of her lovely, uplifted eyes, as he had put the bauble in her eager little hands. And now, while he still saw her thus, he heard his own voice saying an incredible thing. He now heard himself—not some dull, blundering, brutal dolt—saying something vague about its being strictly an "impersonal" sort of present.
Ay, he heard again the very tone in which his own voice uttered these inconceivable words. And then he saw again the dawning bewilderment which crept over the sunny transparency of the exquisite face; the slow shadowing of the soft dark eyes, raised so frankly, so confidingly to his; the quick-coming, quicker-going, quiver of the sweet rose-red lips. At last, as though the glass through which he had seen darkly were miraculously become as clear as crystal, he saw again the quivering fall of the long, curling lashes over the lily cheeks, which reddened suddenly, as they rarely did, before growing swiftly whiter than ever; the sudden proud lifting of the golden head, which naturally drooped like some rare orchid too heavy for its delicate waxen stem: the brave, steady, upward look from the soft eyes, now suddenly grown very bright: the abrupt laying down of the simple gift by the little hand, which was always so gently deliberate in all that it did: the hasty moving away of the slender form, which had, up to that time, rested at his side in the perfect trust which only the timid ever give.
All this rushed back, bringing an unendurable self-revelation. The firmest, deepest foundations of his character were shaken in his own estimation. His pride of uprightness, his pride of intelligence, his pride of good breeding, his belief in his own right feeling, his reliance upon his own quickness of perception, his faith in his fineness of sensibility,—all these now stood convicted of weakness and falsity. Faster and more confusedly many self-delusions flew through the stress of his mind, as burning brands are borne by violent gusts of wind. Thus was hurled the recollection of that day in the graveyard, the day from which had dated this growing aloofness of Doris, an aloofness so gentle that he had mistaken it for timidity; the day from which had dated her increasing unwillingness to continue these daily strolls—an unwillingness so subtle that he had taken it for nothing more than natural anxiety about Miss Judy. Not until this moment had he had the remotest suspicion of the truth, even though it had gradually frozen the sweet freedom of her innocent talk into the silence of cold constraint.
He had been standing still, bowed under this intolerable weight of humiliation, crushed beneath this overwhelming burden of self-reproach. Now he went slowly onward, unseen and unheard, through the gathering darkness and the deep dust. When he came within sight of the light shining behind the white curtain over the one window of Doris's humble home, he paused again and leaned on the fence and looked at the window for a long time. He felt that he could not go nearer it that night, that he could not face Doris until he had more fully faced his own soul. As he gazed at the white light, he thought how like it was to the girl herself, so simple, so clear, so steady, so open, shielded only by the single whiteness of purity. A soft breeze coming over the hills rippled the silver leaves,—grown as dark now as the sombre plumes of the cypress tree,—and stirred the white curtain as if with spirit hands. And then as he lingered there came to him a wonderful change of feeling. The thought of her stole softly to him through the warm starlight, sweet as the breath of the white jessamine. A great, deep tenderness welled up in his heart and went out to her, sweeping all before it—all untrue dreams of ambition, all false thinking, all self-delusion. Then he knew that he loved her; then he knew that he had loved her from the instant that his eyes had fallen upon her, a vision of beauty framed in roses; then he knew that he would love her with the highest and finest love that was his to bestow—so long as he should live.
When this bitter-sweet truth came home to his troubled heart, it brought with it a calm, tender sadness. Even as he recognized it he felt that his own blind folly, his foolish conceit of wisdom, had robbed him of whatever chance, whatever hope he might have had, of winning her love in return. The fatal, unforgivable blunders into which he had fallen so blindly must forever stand in the way. And he hardly dared think there ever could have been any hope, even had he not so hopelessly offended. For humility is always the hall-mark of true love. To be loved by the one beloved is always true love's most wondrous miracle.
With a last lingering look at the light shining through the white curtain, Lynn turned slowly and went down the big road toward his grandmother's house, now lying dark and silent beneath the tall trees which stood over it and amid the thick shrubbery which crowded around it. The passionate emotion with which he had left it had passed wholly away. The love filling his mind and heart, as with the sudden unfurling of soft wings, left no room for anything hard or unkind or bitter. He had almost forgotten the hard words with which his grandmother had so cruelly stoned him; he had wholly forgiven them. For newly awakened love can forgive almost any harshness in the awakening. He was not, in fact, thinking of his grandmother at all; he was thinking solely of Doris, and was planning to see her at the earliest possible moment on the morrow. It was not easy of late to see her alone; he realized this now with a guilty pang which touched his new peace with the old pain. Only on the previous evening he had found her gone from her home, without leaving a message for him, as she always used to leave one. Only by the merest accident had he met her coming out of Miss Judy's gate; only by the most urgent persuasion had he been able to induce her to take the accustomed walk to the graveyard, which she used always to be so ready and even eager to take. Ah, that walk up the hillside, which had been as a torch to the tinder of his grandmother's anger! For that, also, as for everything else, he alone was to blame. It was too late to undo what had been done; but never again through any fault of his should evil speaking or evil thinking approach her spotless innocence. It was not for his strong arms to protect her; his own folly had forfeited all hope of that sweetest and most sacred privilege. Nevertheless, he might still beg her to forgive him, even though he knew that forgiveness was impossible for an offence such as his. And he might still tell her that he loved her and ask her to be his wife, although he knew only too well that she would refuse. And then, having done what he could, he would go on with his work. He had not forgotten his ambition, nor had he thought of giving it up; but his old foolish belief that the happiest marriage must hamper a man's life plans had gone with the rest of his blinding delusions. He no longer thought of needing both hands free for the climbing of ambition's unsteady, long ladder. It now seemed to him that he never could win anything worth the winning without Doris to hold up his hands; that nothing either great or small was worth the winning unless shared by her. And his self-delusion had forever lost him all hope of this. Yet he might still beg her to forgive him, he might still tell her that he loved her and ask her to be his wife. Nothing should deny him that honor and happiness—if he were but spared to see another morning's light.
It came with all the misty glory of the late southern summer. There was something melancholy, something foretelling the saddest days of the year, in the sighing wind which drifted the browning leaves of the old locust trees, wafting them down to the thinning grass. The dim woods belting the purpled horizon already lifted banners of scarlet and gold, waving them here and there on the hillsides, among the fast-fading verdure. The sumac bushes were already binding the foot of the far green hills with brilliant bands of crimson. The near-by blackberry briers were already richly spotted with red. The trumpet-vine, with the dazzling cardinal of its splendid flowers and the rich, dark green of its luxuriant foliage, already made all the crumbling tree-trunks and all the falling rail fences gorgeous mysteries of beauty. The golden-rods were already full-flowering, already gilding the meadows where the black-eyed Susans, too, were aglow, and where the grass was still vividly green beneath the purple shadows cast by the distant hills—the sad, beautiful, dark shadows which slant before the coming of fall. Beyond the shadows and beyond the hills, the summer sun still flooded the warm fields, turning the vast billowing seas of tobacco from blue-green into golden green. And the wide, deep corn-fields, now flowing in silver-crested waves, were already melting into molten gold.
The great ships of this vast inland ocean of grain—the huge, heavy-laden wagons, rising high at the ends like the stem and stern of a vessel, and drawn by doubled and trebled teams—already labored, swayingly, on their way to the Ohio River to deliver their cargoes of wheat to the big steamers which were waiting to bear them away to the whole world. Many of these lurched thunderingly by Lynn Gordon, wholly unheeded, as he went on that morning to seek Doris Wendall. It was very early, as early as he could hope to find even Doris awake, notwithstanding that she awakened with the birds. The wild morning-glories, clinging, wet, fragrant, and sparkling, on all the fences along the wayside, were not closed, and still held out their fragrant blue cups, striped with red like streaks of wine, and brimming with dew. The evening primroses also had forgotten to close, and were still blooming bright and sweet, close in the corners of the fences. Lynn bent down to gather the freshest and sweetest, because it somehow reminded him of Doris, though he knew not why or how. As he straightened up he suddenly saw her!—with a great leap of his heart. There she was, within a stone's throw, just entering Miss Judy's gate. He was not quite near enough to speak had he found any words; and, although he went swiftly toward her with the long, firm stride of a strong-willed man approaching a distinct purpose, she had flitted out of sight before he reached the gate. He was not sure that she had seen him, but he felt that she had; and the feeling brought back the new distrust of himself, the new lack of confidence in his own judgment, the new insecurity in his own knowledge of what was best to do. All these strange and painful feelings, which he had never known till the humbling revelation of the previous night, rushed together now, to hold him dumb and helpless, with his unsteady hand on the little broken gate.
He turned with a nervous start at a sound by his side. Sidney had drawn near without his seeing her. She stood within a few paces, looking at him, and knitting as usual, but with a look of trouble on her honest face. Silently he bowed and stepped aside, holding the gate open for her to pass through.
"You've come to ask about Miss Judy," she said, lowering her voice. "I'm afraid she isn't any better. Doris came on ahead of me, but I haven't seen her since, so that I have had no news from Miss Judy for nearly an hour."
"I—I didn't know she was ill," said Lynn, simply.
"Well, your grandmother did. I sent her word last night that we hardly expected Miss Judy to live till daybreak." Sidney spoke a little severely, and she looked at him with frank curiosity.
"I am sincerely grieved. What is it?" the young man faltered.
"It seems to be the same old weakness of the heart that she's always had. Any kind of a shock has always made it worse, and this foolish lawsuit of that crazy Spaniard's—over an old no-account note of her father's—gave her the hardest blow she's had this many a year, poor little soft soul. It didn't make any difference to her that the note wasn't worth the paper it was written on, and that it had been outlawed long ago. She has always had her own queer little notions about things, and you couldn't shake her, either, mild as she has always been. And she's always worshipped her father, so that she couldn't bear to have anything against his name. He never worried himself much about his debts. The major was very slack-twisted in business matters, just between you and me. But the angel Gabriel, himself, couldn't make Miss Judy believe that, even if he were mean enough to try. Last night she came by my house, going on to see Mr. Pettus. She hoped he might buy the house, and that she could raise the money in that way. But she fainted before she could tell him what she wanted, and he carried her home in his arms. Such a poor, light, little mite of a thing! She's been unconscious most of the time since, but whenever she comes to herself she tries to say something about selling the house—in a whisper, so that Miss Sophia won't hear. Then she begins to worry, wondering what Miss Sophia will do if the house is sold, and honestly believing that poor Miss Sophia will feel disgraced if it isn't, when Miss Sophia neither knows nor cares a blessed thing about the whole matter, so that she's let alone to eat and sleep. I am going into the room now to stay with Miss Judy while Doris goes home for a little rest. She wouldn't leave the bedside for an instant last night. Wait for her," Sidney added, assuming a blank, meaningless expression. "When she comes out she can tell you how the poor little soul is."
With a strange tightening of the throat and a tender aching in his breast, Lynn then stood waiting, with his eyes on Miss Judy's window. It seemed a long time before Doris came out, and when she finally appeared, there was something indefinable in her manner which made him feel that she had not come of her own accord. But she was very calm, very quiet, very sad, and very pale; and her soft dark eyes were softer and darker than ever with unshed tears. She merely said that her mother had sent her to say that there was no change. The doctor had decided that there could be but one. And when she had said this she quietly turned back toward Miss Judy's room. No, she answered in reply to his keenly disappointed inquiry, she was not going home. She could rest and sleep—after—Miss Judy was gone. There was so little time now that they could stay together.